Bill Russo delivered a keynote speech on “The Applications of VR/AR in the Context of Intelligent Manufacturing” at the Global Virtual Reality Conference hosted by the China/Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

Tesla Inc. said it is exploring with government officials in Shanghai the possibility of opening a facility to build electric vehicles for the Chinese market.

The Silicon Valley auto maker reiterated Thursday it plans to define its production plans for China by year’s end. China, the world’s largest market for new-car sales and a big consumer of luxury vehicles, is an important market for Tesla, especially as the government pushes for more electric vehicles.

“Tesla is deeply committed to the Chinese market, and we continue to evaluate potential manufacturing sites around the globe to serve the local markets,” Tesla said in a statement. “While we expect most of our production to remain in the U.S., we do need to establish local factories to ensure affordability for the markets they serve.”

Tesla didn’t mention a local joint-venture partner. China requires foreign auto makers to operate factories with local partners, though officials have signaled a willingness to relax such requirements. In May, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who had recently visited China, cryptically suggested such rule changes would be “good timing.”

By making cars in China, Tesla could cut the prices of its vehicles by a third by reducing shipping costs and avoiding import duties, Mr. Musk has said.

In afternoon trading in New York on Thursday, Tesla’s shares rose about 2% to $383.99. The stock is up about 80% this year.

China charges a 25% duty on all imported cars, but the hefty markup hasn’t deterred affluent buyers who regard a Tesla vehicle as a prestige item.

One Chinese Tesla owner, Chen Zhanchong, said he paid $176,000 for a Tesla Model S P90D in late 2015, well over the sales price in the U.S. But the 31-year-old Guangzhou resident, who recently left his job at an internet company, said it was still a good value for a high-performance electric car.

“If a cheap Model 3 is produced in China in large quantities, local companies won’t be able to compete,” Mr. Chen said. “Tesla will enjoy explosive growth.”

Tesla reported over $1 billion in revenue in China in 2016, a figure that analysts believe equates to around 11,000 vehicle sales. The company sold just over 76,000 cars globally last year.

And sales in China have accelerated in 2017: Tesla sold around 5,500 cars in China in the first four months of the year, according to EV Sales, a website that tracks the electric-vehicle market.

Yet while local manufacturing gives Tesla the opportunity to sell cars in far greater numbers, China’s fast-changing regulatory environment is creating uncertainty among foreign auto makers unsure about what Beijing’s requirements will be.

Current regulations also require manufacturers building electric cars in China to source all vehicle components locally. That presents a challenge for Tesla, which won’t be able to use batteries made in its U.S. “gigafactory” in its Chinese-built cars, said Bill Russo, managing director of Gao Feng Advisory, a Shanghai-based auto consulting firm. Tesla may be forced to form a joint venture with a local battery maker, as well as a car maker, he said.

Even so, Tesla has no choice but to manufacture vehicles in China, despite the regulatory uncertainties, in order to achieve scale and tap what is already the world’s biggest market for electric cars, Mr. Russo said.

“On a positive note, China is willing to allow the premier EV brand to plant its flag on Chinese soil,” he said, referring to Tesla. “Tesla needs China. And China needs Tesla — it wants to show they’re not a closed ecosystem.”

Recent events signaled that Tesla is moving closer to committing to opening a factory in China, analysts said. Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings acquired a 5% stake in Tesla for $1.78 billion in March, and Mr. Musk met with senior government officials in Beijing the following month.

–Junya Qian contributed to this article.

Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com and Trefor Moss at Trefor.Moss@wsj.com

China’s automotive industry is entering a period where discontinuities and disruptions are likely to reshape the competitive landscape – and this represents an opportune time to guide the development in alignment with China’s overall industrial development goals. With the issuance in April 2017 of the Automotive Industry Mid to Long Term Development Plan, the Ministry for Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) provides “guiding principles” for the development of China’s auto industry for the next decade.

Leveraging new energy and connected vehicle technology as entry points for accelerating auto industry development and transformation, the policy’s objective is to transform China from the largest auto market to a global leading automotive production base. Specifically, the guideline sets a goal for Chinese new energy vehicle[1] (NEV) companies to be among the Top 10 NEV companies worldwide by 2020, and to further expand their global impact and market share by 2025. A target has been set for the domestic NEV sales to reach 2 million units by 2020, and 7 million units by 2025 (20% of total vehicle sales).

Chinese automakers have struggled to reach a global leadership position in the automotive industry due to their relatively short history and lack of technical experience in advanced automotive technologies centered on the internal combustion engine. The NEV market opens a window for China to potentially level the playing field and assume a more competitive position versus the global industry, as multi-national players have not yet established a sustainable market leadership position.

The U.S. auto maker plans to build the Mondeo Energi plug-in hybrid and a new all-electric SUV in China

SHANGHAI— Ford MotorCo.F -0.35% said Thursday that it would start building electric cars in China to tap into a state-sponsored boom in green-energy vehicles.

In doing so, the Detroit-based company signaled that it had swallowed industry concerns about bringing proprietary electric-car technology to China, despite misgivings among foreign auto makers about intellectual-property protection in the world’s largest auto market.

“It’s manifest destiny” for foreign car makers to get past those fears and start building electric cars in China, said Bill Russo, managing director of Gao Feng Advisory, a Shanghai consulting firm.

Mass uptake of electric vehicles is set to happen in China first, he said, “and none of those companies can afford not to be relevant to the future of their industry.”

Ford’s local joint venture Changan Ford Automobile Co. will start building the Mondeo Energi plug-in hybrid vehicle in China next year, with a new all-electric sport-utility vehicle set to follow within five years, the company said in a statement.

Electric powertrains will be manufactured locally by 2020, and by 2025 all of Changan Ford’s vehicles will come in electrified versions, it said.

“The time is right for Ford to expand our EV lineup and investments in China,” said Chief Executive Mark Fields.

China is already the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, with over half a million electric or hybrid cars sold there last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

The government is encouraging their uptake by heavily subsidizing electric cars through payments to manufacturers, which are then able to sell EVs more cheaply. It is also far easier to obtain a license plate for an EV than for a traditional gasoline car in congested cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Local authorities have also set ambitious targets for electrifying bus and taxi fleets over the next few years, and for the rollout of EV charging facilities.

There could be as many as 32 million new energy vehicles in China by 2025, according to Gao Feng Advisory—a total that is likely to be a substantial share of the global fleet, with uptake of EVs in the U.S. and Europe happening more slowly.

Yet while most gasoline cars sold in China are built by foreign auto makers operating through local joint ventures, almost all of the electric cars sold in China last year were made by Chinese companies operating without foreign input.

Silicon Valley electric-car maker TeslaInc. was the one notable exception: Without disclosing how many cars it had sold, the company said in a March 1 filing that its 2016 revenue topped $1 billion in China for the first time last year, leading auto-industry analysts to estimate China sales of around 11,000 imported vehicles. Chinese tech company Tencent HoldingsLtd. last week revealed it had taken a 5% stake in Tesla.

But Tesla, like most other foreign auto makers, has so far held back from building EVs in China. Beijing had sought to spur EV manufacturing by telling auto makers that a certain proportion of the cars they build in China would have to be electric in the near future, although officials have recently signaled that those moves may be delayed amid complaints from the industry and from foreign governments.

Imported cars incur a 25% tariff, making them less competitive, and so auto makers naturally want to build in China, said Michael Dunne of Hong Kong-based Dunne Automotive. But they have been holding out for some relaxation of China’s strict joint-venture rules before committing to large-scale EV manufacturing in China, he said.

Foreign car makers and the Chinese authorities have been “sitting around the poker table”, said Mr. Dunne.

It’s the foreign car makers who appear to have blinked.

In March, Buick, a unit of General MotorsCo. , announced plans to start building plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in China. Last year, GM said it wanted to have 10 new energy vehicles in China by 2020, though it has yet to reveal any plans to start manufacturing its highest-profile EV, the Chevrolet Bolt, in the country.

BEIJING — On a windswept lot near Beijing’s main airport, Lu Qun talks up the electric sports car he hopes will transform him into China’s Elon Musk.

“This is a real performance car,” the entrepreneur boasted of his sleek, gray-and-black Qiantu K50. “It’s fun. You can feel the quality. You’ll love driving this car.”

For Mr. Lu, 48, the roadster is his best chance to make it big. After a lifetime of obscurity creating vehicles for other companies, the bespectacled engineer is betting that the rise of electric cars will propel his company — and his country — into the automotive spotlight.

“Traditional auto manufacturers are constrained by their old models,” he said. “We can see things with fresh eyes.”

Across China, government officials, corporate executives, private investors and newcomers like Mr. Lu are in a headlong rush to develop a domestic electric car industry. The country’s goal, like Mr. Lu’s, is to capitalize on the transition to electric to turbocharge the country’s lagging automobile sector to become a major competitor to the United States, Japan and Germany.

That has been a goal of China’s industrial planners for decades, as the government has lavished resources on building homegrown automakers and discriminated against foreign players.

But so far, that effort has failed.

Local manufacturers have lacked the brands, technology and managerial heft to outmaneuver their established rivals, either at home or abroad. Chinese consumers have preferred more reliable Buicks, Volkswagens and Toyotas to the often substandard offerings from domestic manufacturers, while little-known Chinese models have struggled to gain traction overseas.

Electric vehicles could offer a second chance — one China’s policy makers do not intend to miss.

They targeted electric cars for special support in an industrial policy called “Made in China 2025,” which aims to foster upgraded, technologically advanced manufacturing. By 2020, Beijing expects its automakers to be able to churn out two million electric and hybrid vehicles annually — six times the number produced in 2015.

This time, China’s carmakers may be better positioned. Since electric vehicles are a relatively new business for all players, Chinese manufacturers and international rivals are largely starting from the same point.

“There is a smaller gap between where China is today and the rest of the world” in electric cars, said Bill Russo, managing director at Gao Feng Advisory, a Shanghai consultancy, and a former Chrysler executive. “There is room for newer start-up companies to dream big in China.”

Mr. Lu is one of those dreamers.

Fascinated by cars since he was a boy, he studied automotive engineering at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. Upon graduating in 1990, he joined the research and development team at the China-based joint venture of Jeep, then a division of Chrysler.

During his time there, which included two years in Detroit, Mr. Lu came to feel such overseas operations had limited prospects in China — the ventures’ partners would try to balance their interests, and so were slow to develop strategies and make decisions.

So in 2003, he and nine colleagues started CH-Auto Technology Corporation as a specialty research and design shop for the local car industry. Since then, the firm has designed vehicles for some of China’s biggest automakers.

Mr. Lu decided to start manufacturing his own vehicles because of the shift to electric. Since producing electric cars requires new parts and technologies, he believed a small entrant could better compete with these new vehicles than traditional automakers.

“Electric vehicles won’t just replace cars with conventional engines, but they will bring a huge change to the entire car industry,” Mr. Lu said. “We wanted to be part of this revolution.”

The result is the K50. Designed at his research center, the two-seater has a light, carbon fiber exterior and a console stuffed with touch screens. Rows of batteries propel the roadster to a top speed of about 120 miles per hour and carry it as far as 200 miles on a single charge.

No longer content to watch others produce his designs, Mr. Lu is currently constructing a $300 million factory in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai, to manufacture 50,000 cars a year. In all, he expects to invest as much as $1.4 billion into his venture over five years.

He did not specify what the car would sell for, but Mr. Lu intends to price the K50 at the top of the market when it goes on sale this year.

That sets CH-Auto on a collision course with the industry’s flagship: Tesla.

Elon Musk’s company already has an edge. While Mr. Lu is building his business from scratch, Tesla has been established in China since 2013. CH-Auto will have to persuade wealthy customers to plunk down a large sum on an unfamiliar brand — Qiantu — over Mr. Musk’s recognizable models.

Mr. Lu nevertheless remains confident. He argues the sporty K50 will appeal to a more leisure-oriented driver than Tesla’s cars. As a logo, the company has chosen the dragonfly, because its managers believe the speedy, nimble insect has similar attributes to his electric car. To market it, Mr. Lu is considering opening showrooms in major Chinese cities, backed by a platform to sell online.

Elon Musk “is someone I can learn from,” he said. “Tesla has huge symbolic significance because it is the first company to make people believe a business model solely around electric vehicles is possible.”

But, he added, “we are not looking to create the Chinese Tesla.”

When it comes to competing with Tesla, Mr. Lu can count on ample help from the Chinese government.

To bring down costs and spur demand, the state has unleashed a torrent of cash. It has offered subsidies to manufacturers and tax breaks for buyers, and plowed investments into charging stations to make electric cars more practical.

In all, UBS Securities estimates that the government spent $13 billion promoting electric vehicles in 2015 alone. So far, Mr. Lu has financed the K50 through loans and injections of fresh capital, but says he “won’t refuse” government subsidies if they become available.

Some analysts fear the state’s largess could prove as much bane as boon.

China may be recreating the waste and excess in electric cars that has plagued other state-targeted sectors, like steel and renewable energy, without spurring the technological innovation the economy needs to compete. And even though China’s car market is the world’s biggest, it is still unlikely to absorb all of the electric vehicle projects underway today.

“They are fueling overcapacity, with a lot of wasted money, and I’m doubtful that in the end you’ll have a successful electric car industry,” says Crystal Chang, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley who studies China’s auto industry policies.

Significant sums have already been squandered. In September, the Finance Ministry fined five companies for defrauding the government of $150 million by fabricating sales of electric vehicles to obtain more subsidies, and several companies have failed to make an impression.

Mr. Lu is certain, however, that the K50 stands out in a crowded field. The car has already gotten some advance buzz; a review on one popular Chinese website praised its design as “beautiful” and “avant-garde” and its body as “very muscular.”

“A big advantage they have is their knowledge of what it takes to build a quality vehicle,” said Jack Perkowski, managing partner of the Beijing-based consulting firm JFP Holdings and a veteran of China’s car sector. “They have a better chance than many others because of that.”

Mr. Lu is counting on it.

“There are a lot of electric vehicle companies and hot projects attracting a lot of money,” he said. “Not every company and not every car will be successful.”

I recently attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where traditional automakers, suppliers and several technology firms were showcasing their vision of the future of mobility. Of particular interest were the many demonstrations and announcements related to autonomous vehicles. Early forms of this technology are finding their way into commercial applications in the form of “assisted driving” features which incorporate cameras and radar/lidar to provide the car an extra set of eyes to sense its surroundings and inform the driver of risks. Rapid advancement of technologies needed to fully automate the driving process is also evident, indicating that robotic forms of transportation will be possible within at least 2 industry product cycles (5-10 years).

The following is a Q&A which offers a perspective on the future of mobility and the design and function of autonomous vehicles.

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The Autonomous Driving (AD) era will allow for an entirely new driving experience for drivers and passengers. How much of an impact will AD technology have on the comfort and convenience of driving?

Autonomous Driving will completely redefine the comfort and convenience of transportation. In our current paradigm, comfort is designed around the driver and occupants in an externally focused manner: with eyes to the road. The space around the front seat occupants – both driver and passenger – is oriented to the information needed to manually drive the car to its destination. Autonomous vehicles will experience fewer accidents, over 95% of which are attributable to human error. Cars can therefore be lighter, with less structure without compromising occupant safety. Traffic jams will be less common since autonomous vehicles will be able to leverage vehicle-to infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity in order to avoid congestion and smooth the flow of traffic.

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When you look back at the public’s embrace of big technology shifts – trains or commercial aviation for instance – to what extent was that shift motivated by the convenience of the new mode of transportation?

Convenience always shapes our choices when it comes to transportation. Human beings are inherently explorers and some of history’s greatest inventions – wheels, bicycles, steamships, trains, cars, and airplanes – have allowed us to be mobile over greater and greater distances. Over time, each of these inventions added more and more convenience-oriented features to make the experience of mobility more “painless”. Mobility devices are themselves a convenience which allow us to get where we want to be without walking. All forms of public and privately-owned transportation are solving this basic problem of minimizing our travel time. Each solution became commercially viable by offering a benefit versus other forms of transportation that some people were willing to pay to either use or own. For example, trains reduce travel time across a country from months to days, and commercial aviation reduced this to hours. We can now circle the world by jet in a little more than a day, a journey the first explorers could not complete in several years, if they lived to tell the tale. In recent history, owing to the invention of the internal combustion engine powered car (Carl Benz in 1886), and the moving assembly line (Henry Ford in 1908) the car became the primary means for the average person to satisfy their daily commuting needs. In the increasingly urbanized world of the 21st century, we will experience the next evolution in convenient human mobility: personalized, autonomous mobility on-demand.

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What are some ways in which the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology already in the market, like cruise control, is increasing comfort and convenience for drivers and passengers?

Such technologies act as “support” systems for drivers which allow more tasks to be “delegated” to the car. For example, cruise control allows a driver to focus less on maintaining a constant speed and thereby improves the driving experience. Routine or mundane tasks like parking or adjusting speeds while driving on highways are already becoming mainstream. Lane departure warning, parking assistance, and cruise control are features that allow the driver to focus less on routine tasks and focus on the actual experience of driving. Over time, the number of tasks that can be handled by the “smart car” will increase in order to reduce “pain points” of driving and making the overall experience more convenient, safer and therefore more enjoyable for the occupant.

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In addition to the advantages of existing ADAS and autonomous driving technologies, what are consumers most focused on when it comes to comfort and convenience of fully autonomous vehicles?

With Autonomous driving, a new paradigm can be established to re-focus the passenger on how to productively use their transportation time. Observing the outside of the car moves from a requirement to a choice – especially for the user of a mobility service. Space that is allocated to providing driver information can be repurposed from a driver-passenger perspective to a “connected user” perspective. Beyond mobility, a fully autonomous vehicle’s key benefit will be the experience it gives to the user, and the primary benefit which comes from delegating the task of driving to the car is PRODUCTIVE TIME. As such, while the purpose of the car as a transportation device has not changed, the very concept of how to treat and offer convenience-oriented features to the occupant is different: the autonomous vehicle is built with a “user-centric” mindset, as opposed to a “driver-centric” mindset.

An autonomous car, especially one used in longer-distance (>10km) commuting distances will need to be able to transform travel time into productive time through convenient services which may include infotainment (watching news/video, gaming), online communication (social networking, e-mail, conference calls), or online-to-offline services (discounts or promotions based on mobility patterns). In the world of personalized, autonomous mobility on-demand, the car essentially becomes a connected rolling space that transports us between the places we live, work, and play.

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What Autonomous Driving feature will consumers be most surprised by and also what core functionally will they gravitate to most?

For people born in the late 20th century, it will be difficult to reimagine this new form of mobility. Most of us from this period see a car through a nostalgic lens: our most prized possession outside of our home, and the one that we can take with us to showcase our lifestyle and aspirations. For many, this will never change.

However, mobility is being revolutionized by digital technology. The rapid emergence of ride-hailing services such as Uber, Lyft, Ola, and Didi Chuxing are transforming the car into a transportation service device. It is in this mode that we can see a great fit for autonomous forms of mobility – as the operators of such services will benefit from not having to incur the cost of a driver, along with the lower maintenance and repair cost of autonomous vehicles. Users of such services expect to be driven and are not seeking the driving experience in any case.

The most surprising aspect of this type of vehicle will be that it affords its users the opportunity to turn inward and use their time productively. Future cars used for short commuting will be smaller and occupy less physical space: they simply pick people up and drop them off and do this with minimal “extras”. These will be summoned by an app on a mobile device. Longer commuting will be done in autonomous vehicles which have spaces designed to address the productivity needs of the occupants: with connectivity and consumption of content at the core. Such cars may be booked or offered through a “subscription model” to give the users some flexibility in the service offering. The shift in this paradigm will surprise people the most since these vehicles will be designed from a pure passenger experience perspective which will include how to entertain or delight the user during the journey.

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Self-parking, one of the earlier semiautonomous features, is now found on many mainstream models and widely used by drivers. Do you think the public will adopt more complex autonomous features or a fully autonomous vehicle in the same manner?

The commercialization path for more complex and fully autonomous driving will be very different than what we seen so far. In the current owner/driver-centric business paradigm, new features have to be sold to customers who accept the value proposition of the technology and are willing to pay for it. Early-stage technologies typically come with a heavy price premium and are typically introduced to “premium” brands where customers are less price sensitive. However, barring regulatory intervention, this will likely limit adoption of technologies including electric and autonomous vehicles as there are cheaper alternatives (conventional engines and human drivers).

The game-changer for both electric and autonomous vehicles comes from the convergence of On-Demand Mobility (ODM) with electric and autonomous vehicles. ODM players, such as Uber and Lyft are highly investing in autonomous vehicles as a means of lowering their operating costs and unlocking the potential to participate in the Digital ecosystem through offering the users of its services access to content and O2O services. This will create a new pathway to commercializing and scaling up the autonomous driving technology in a way that has not been seen before: as we have seen with other “smart devices”, hardware innovation is backed by the digital ecosystem and thereby eventually becomes mainstream for everyone.

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Since road conditions vary globally, will perceptions of comfort and convenience vary by country? For example, will it permeate places like Amsterdam where many travel by bicycle or public transportation already?

Comfort and convenience are solutions to mobility “pain points”, and the degree to which people experience these pain points varies greatly based on where we live.

Mobility pain is much higher in densely populated urban cities like New York, London, Paris, New Delhi, Mexico City and virtually all major cities in China. The driving experience in highly urbanized countries like China can be horrific. Cities like Beijing experience gridlock conditions at several times during a day, and suffer from severe environmental impact from the tailpipe and other emissions. Electric and autonomous mobility on demand would be a welcome solution to address these mobility pain points.

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From a societal perspective, how will AD technology change the way individuals get to and from their various destinations?

Adoption of autonomous driving technology will improve flow of traffic, reduce accidents and improve the quality of life in an increasingly urbanized world. Scaling up this technology through the convergence of ODM with electric and autonomous vehicles in these cities will accelerate a transition from a transportation model where we own an under-utilized asset that is used 1-2 hours per day to a model where autonomous cars, directed by a smart-city transportation grid, are deployed on demand to where they are needed. This is a far more efficient system where we will witness a shift from ownership of hardware toward paying for the utility that is derived from the hardware.

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When it comes to commuting, how will AD technology ease the problem of extensive traffic jams in cities like Beijing or Los Angeles?

Autonomous vehicles deployed by on-demand mobility services fleets will be able to communicate with each other, and will be directed to and from users and their destinations by a Smart City transportation network. These cars will be highly utilized assets, which minimizes the amount of city space which needs to be allocated for parking lots for cars which sit idle for more than 22 hours a day. Cars can be routed around the traffic, minimizing the traffic jams that define the life of residents of cities like Los Angeles and Shanghai. Smart, connected, and autonomous mobility devices backed by advanced algorithms used to govern the mobility patterns will improve the livability of cities in an increasingly urbanized world.

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Besides the impact AD will have on productivity, how else will it improve lives for people outside of transportation?

Autonomous driving will have a tremendous impact on our environmental footprint. The technologies required to power and govern a network of personalized, electric and autonomous mobility on demand (A-MOD) have the potential to transform the lives of people all over the world. For example, these increasingly electric-powered vehicles will be also be part of the energy storage grid, we could very well moderate energy consumption and potentially shrink our carbon footprint. Transportation innovation has reshaped the history of mankind, and the transportation revolution of the next decade will set the course and has the potential to improve the lives of all generations to follow.

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Bill Russo is the Managing Director and Automotive Practice Leader at Gao Feng Advisory Company, based in Shanghai. He has 30 years of automotive industry experience and has lives and worked in China since 2004. He was formerly the leader of Chrysler Group’s business in North East Asia.

At a media event on Tuesday ahead of this week’s CES 2017 conference, the Los Angeles-area company showed a four-door, sports-utility-like vehicle called the FF 91 that executives claim can go from zero to 60 miles an hour in 2.39 seconds, faster than the Tesla Model S.

Faraday’s car has cushy back seats that can recline like a La-Z-Boy chair and an interior cabin loaded with large video screens that can be updated with next-generation gadgets. Faraday hasn’t disclosed a starting price.

“I’m hoping…to convince people that we’re real,” said Nick Sampson, Faraday’s senior vice president of engineering and research and development. “We are doing a real product, it’s not just a vaporware, Batmobile to create attention.”

Mr. Sampson said the company plans to roll out the FF 91 in 2018, but he wouldn’t discuss Faraday’s financial status.

That question arose in November when Faraday’s main investor, Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, disclosed a cash crunch at LeEco Holdings. Mr. Jia, founder of LeEco, told employees the company had expanded too quickly as part of a multibillion-dollar spending spree to build a conglomerate ranging from smartphones to electric cars and a film studio.

LeEco’s precarious cash situation has had “some impact” on Faraday, Mr. Sampson said, but he stressed the companies are separately run.

In late December, Mr. Sampson spent more than three hours showing reporters around the company’s headquarters, a former Nissan Motors Co. facility in Gardena, Calif. The former Tesla executive led a tour through various departments, including aerodynamics, body engineering and manufacturing, as many executives presented using large LeEco TVs and talked optimistically about being ready to begin production.

Notably absent was Marco Mattiacci, global chief brand and commercial officer, whose name was printed on the agenda. He quit a few days later, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Mattiacci formerly headed Ferrari in North America and was one of eight senior executives who left in the past year, according to one of the people.

Some of Faraday’s Western executives, hired from high-profile auto makers, have disagreed with their Chinese counterparts over the direction of Faraday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Underscoring how important Faraday views the CES reveal, a giant TV screen in the company’s lobby near the boardroom displays a clock counting down the hours until the event. “While getting a PR event right would be a step in the right direction, it’s still not clear whether they can raise the funds needed to finish the journey,” Bill Russo, an automotive consultant for Gao Feng Advisory Co. in Shanghai, said.

Faraday joins a crowded field of startups that aim to follow the same path as Tesla. Silicon Valley automotive startup Lucid Motors last month revealed the production version of its electric sedan that will cost about $160,000 for early versions, with the expected starting price to drop to around $65,000.

The sales pitch for the Lucid car is similar to Faraday’s: promises of sports-car-like abilities, luxurious interiors and eventual self-driving capabilities. The companies also share Mr. Jia as an investor, though he isn’t a majority shareholder in Lucid.

During the recent Faraday tour, an executive demonstrated the car’s self-parking feature. While reporters were allowed rides in prototypes to demonstrate acceleration and handling, they weren’t given up-close demonstrations of the autonomous feature.

Instead, they watched from across the parking lot as the vehicle’s operator kept his left hand hanging out the window as the car approached an open spot and backed into it. Asked if reporters could see up-close how it worked, a spokesman said, “Maybe later.”

At the event Tuesday, after showing a video of the self-parking, Mr. Jia surprised the audience by popping out of the car after driving on stage.

He pushed a button to activate the self-parking feature. But it didn’t work.

“It’s a little bit lazy tonight,” Mr. Sampson said.

Moments later they tried it again with success. The company then said it will begin taking $5,000 deposits.

As the development of automotive electronics and telematics is gaining speed, intelligent car applications are gradually and successfully integrated in our daily lives.

The numerous advantages of latest technologies do not only include an improved driving experience or enhanced safety, but also the evolution towards less fuel consumption and more sustainable driving.

Therefore, the September Automotive Roundtable in Shanghai will discuss promising trends of future cars in China and its latest applications in several areas, such as Driver Assistance Systems, Autonomous Driving, Automotive Multimedia & Communication, Connected Vehicles and Online Services in China.

Roger Looney has 30 Years experience in automotive tooling, engineering and design and over 20 years experience in Asia. Current goals include utilizing that knowledge and experience to develop world class, exciting vehicles of the future.
Specialties: Automotive Product Development and Launch, Electronics, Hybrid & EV development, Asia Mergers and Acquisitions, Six Sigma, Product Development, New Business Development in Asia, Team Building in China, Low Cost Country Sourcing, Contract Development and Negotiation in China, Korea, Japan.

An ‘Internet of Vehicles’ enthusiast, Bevin Jacob envisions building and incorporating “Mobility Services” to improve Consumer’s digital lifestyle. He has 16 years of active involvement in building “Connected Solutions” for Mobile, Telematics and Multimedia Devices. Bevin enjoys working with highly motivated teams to bring about disruptive innovations in connected vehicles business.

Bill Russo is the Shanghai-based Managing Director and the Automotive Practice leader at Gao Feng Advisory Company. His over 30 years of experience includes 15 years as an automotive executive, including 12 years of experience in China and Asia. He has also worked nearly 12 years in the electronics and information technology industries. He has worked as an advisor and consultant for numerous multinational and local Chinese firms in the formulation and implementation of their global market and product strategies. While the Vice President of Chrysler North East Asia, he successfully negotiated agreements with partners and obtained required approvals from the China government to bring six new vehicle programs to the market in a three-year period, while concurrently establishing an infrastructure for local sourcing and sales distribution. Mr. Russo has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in New York, and a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mr. Russo is a highly sought after opinion leader on the development of the China market and the automotive industry.

Ms. Moriel has been providing CEO & top management placements and succession expertise for global automotive companies across the Asia-Pacific region for close to 15 years. She previously worked for Schlumberger, the London Consulting Group, Frito-Lay (Pepsico) and Fiducia Management Consultants.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering for the Institute of Technology and Superior Studies of Monterrey and has completed an Executive Program in Strategy and Organization from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Mr. John Shen, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy, Greater China

Mr. Shen Jun has more than 20 years of industry and management consulting experience. He is now Managing Director with Accenture Strategy Greater China. Before he joined Accenture, Mr. Shen was Senior Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and has been leading the Automotive Competence Center (ACC) in Greater China. Mr. Shen has served many leading MNC/local companies in automotive industry, covering a wide range of topics. Mr. Shen has in-depth knowledge and expertise in the functional areas of corporate strategy, merger and acquisitions, operational benchmark, organizational restructuring and sales and marketing management (especially on branding, channel optimization, pricing and new product launch), etc.

The cars are basically indistinguishable unless you hone in on the exact stitching of the seats or the fine arrangement of the headlights. Even then, changes are so minuscule, it’s nearly impossible to realize one of these vehicles costs $41,000, and the other just $21,700.

British luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover and Chinese carmaker Jiangling will go to court this summer in China to settle their dispute over what exactly is fair game in the auto industry. Can Chinese companies continue to get away with “shanzhai” — a Chinese term for prideful counterfeiting — of car designs?

Range Rover’s Evoque and Jiangling’s Landwind X7 are practically the same car to the untrained eye.

It’s a judicial battle that pits Western car companies against the burgeoning Chinese and East Asian market, and one that has captured the attention of economists, auto industry insiders and intellectual property experts.

The Chinese consumer market has grown exponentially since late 1980s economic reform. Some of the largest growth has come from auto companies, both state-owned and foreign joint-ventures. In 2008, when the market was still in its relative infancy, Chinese buyers purchased 9.4 million cars. By 2015, they bought 24.6 million.

And as the industry rapidly expands, Western carmakers, from the United States’ “big three” to German luxury brands to other imports, have rushed to gobble up market share, in the process flooding China and its comparably fledgling car companies with new vehicle models.

The best way Chinesemanufacturers could compete was “shanzhai,” reverse engineering foreign products as a way to enter the market without overwhelming research expenditures.

“In the automotive industry, you can copy the look of the the vehicle, but the skills required for the highly complex integrated systems, if you’re a Chinese company, you don’t have engineers with long career histories with that capability,” said Bill Russo, managing director of Shanghai-based Gao Feng Advisory Company.

“So you shorten the life cycle by purchasing or licensing or reverse engineering. And this is not a Chinese-invented cycle.”

Imitation, as the idiom goes, is the sincerest form of flattery. But it’s also a great way to make money, something merchants have realized for hundreds of years.

The United States in the 1800s, for example, lacked authors who could stack up against British literary giants, so American publishers reprinted British works without paying heed to copyright laws, said Mark Bartholomew, a professor of law at the University at Buffalo.

Benjamin Franklin, the Benjamin Franklin, even published pirated works. William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens came to America to complain about it. The United States only stiffened its intellectual property laws once its industries, both mechanical and intellectual, matured by the end of the century.

“It boils down to economics,” Bartholomew said. “The Chinese economy doesn’t have this same tradition of the manufacturers like Ford or Hyundai or any of the folks who are making these cars. So if you don’t have these copyright laws, why pay if you can get away with it?”

China does have intellectual property laws, though, and it’s a signatory to international intellectual property agreements. But China’s laws are applied inconsistently, and even the international rules aren’t always enforced in China and elsewhere around the world.

Some countries recognize certain kind of intellectual property, but not others. For example, special door handles on a car: Are those a decorative creative works, or do they have some functionality? Creative works get copyrights. Objects with usefulness get patents. And states, not companies, are the arbiters of what objects get what protection.

It leaves multinational companies rushing to strategically secure their rights all over the world. In large established markets like the United States and Europe, car companies apply for protection right away. But in a developing market such as China — its auto market was until recently considered “developing” — those applications only became priorities over the last decade.

Smaller Chinese companies without strong market presence used past administrative delays as windows of opportunity. If intellectual property protection hadn’t been filed domestically, it was convenient to reverse engineer the product. And if the protection was filed sloppily, companies reverse engineered cars largely without the risk of prosecution.

Even when U.S. auto makers file their paperwork in the right way, China car companies enjoy remarkable home field advantage in their courts. More mature courts in Beijing or Shanghai might have judges more willing to hear out foreign companies, but rural courts or those in factory-heavy districts often show interest to local industry, including counterfeiters.

And so the copycats started coming. Honda fought a Chinese carmaker for 12 years for copying the CR-V. The Chery QQ riffed off the Chevrolet Spark in 2005. Shuanghuan’s CEO SUV model copied BMW’s X5 in 2007. Shuanghuan’s Noble copied Mercedes Benz’s Smartcar in 2009. The Lifan 320 copied the Mini Cooper Countryman in 2012.

Hummers and Porsches and Rolls Royces have been copied. Even Ferraris have been copied, and were shipped to Spain where they were seized by police.

“Anything known to mankind can be faked, even a Ferrari,” said said Frederick Mostert, past president of the International Trademark Association and a research fellow at University of Oxford and Peking University. To prove a point, he bought one and traveled with it and shows pictures of it at speaking engagements.

Ferraris, though, aren’t the counterfeits major car companies worry about. Any buyer looking for a luxury car is in the market to spend luxury car kind of money. That’s especially true in China, where consumers are extremely brand conscious, experts say. Nobody who wants a Land Rover is going to be fooled by a Landwind.

“People who buy [the Landwind] can’t afford the Land Rover,” said Russo, the Geo Feng consultant. “And of course if you’re the company that’s out there, you’re going to be pissed off about it, but nobody is getting confused.

“Get in that Landwind and drive it. I’ve driven many, many cars in China. It’s not the same car.”

As much as the counterfeits are inconveniences, it may be the lawsuits to stop the practice that may hurt Western automakers more, auto industry experts say.The Chinese public doesn’t like to see its industries get bullied. Plus, if one copycat company gets shut down, others pop back up. Western companies end up playing legal whack-a-mole with money they could use to make newer, better cars, said Kenneth D. Crews, a Los Angeles-based attorney and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University.

That kind of strategy actually trains customers to look for newer models and not settle on older ones that are more easily counterfeited. More mature Chinese car companies have grown up and away from copying other models. Once they made enough money to invest in research and original design, they did.

“These companies have grown to become more than just copycats,” Russo said. “They’re advanced and they’re innovative.”